


All in the Family

by BurnItAllDownDahling



Series: A Family Affair [28]
Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: M/M, Medical Procedures, Mentions of Cancer, Multi, Secrets, Spardacest (Devil May Cry), Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 05:34:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21113513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurnItAllDownDahling/pseuds/BurnItAllDownDahling
Summary: All the secrets are revealed -- and Nero's evil human soul is the core of the problem. What's a devil to do when the enemy is within?





	All in the Family

"It was my demon who gave it away," Nero said. Dante and Vergil sat up in the bed, slowly, both of them staring at him: Dante radiating shock and unease, Vergil wary. They thought he was angry. He _wished_ he could just be angry.

"Your demon couldn't keep a secret for a few years?" Dante growled. "Damn it. It had one job."

The demon in Nero roiled in frustration. Nero sighed and spoke for it. "It didn't give the secret away in words," he said. "It understood the danger. But you let it meet her. M-my daughter." The words felt strange on his tongue, and still shocking. His daughter. He had a _daughter_. He was a father. So sweet, this secret strangeness. "I keep trying to tell you guys that my demon is different. Demons aren't supposed to care about stuff like this, but... Every time I thought about Kyrie, or that day we spent at her place, I would feel this _ache_ inside me. Right here." He pressed a hand to his chest. They blinked, Dante's anger fading and Vergil's frown deepening. "This _yearning_ to go back there, and love, and protect. It never said a word, but it missed her so much that I've basically felt like shit for weeks now, without ever knowing why. I thought -- " He hesitated, then looked away. "I worried I was falling out of love with you. Then you both decided to do this thing with Lady, and for a while I was sure of it. You didn't love me anymore. I wasn't enough for you, you wanted things I could never give you, this was the beginning of the end and you were tired of me. Better to leave before you drove me away."

Vergil stiffened, swept aside the bedsheets, and practically leapt out of bed. He did not call in Yamato, but there was tension in him as he came over to Nero and took his arm, tightly. As if he expected Nero to try and run away.

"Your human," he said. Dante caught his breath, understanding belatedly. "Such thoughts are its poison."

Leave it to Nero's father to understand all the nuances of evil. "Yeah," Nero said. He didn't resist Vergil's grip, knowing its cause, and grateful. Vergil _did_ still want him. Knowing that -- feeling it, in that tight grip -- helped. Seeing Dante rise more slowly and come over, his face writ with fear for Nero, helped too. They _did_ love him. He knew it, he just... shit.

"My human must have figured things out before I did," Nero said. "And so he _told_ me about Angela -- told me that you two and Kyrie and even my own fucking demon were against me, and the only one I could trust was my human soul. I almost listened. I almost left you both, yesterday, while you were... busy. I was gonna steal Angela and go hide with those people my human mobilized last time. That was the plan. You wouldn't have even noticed 'til I was long gone."

Dante had gone pale. He turned away and started pacing, restlessly, rubbing his hands through his hair. Vergil simply watched Nero. "What changed your mind?" he asked.

"Nothing. I'm still not sure that staying here is right. My human is still yammering away in me, telling me that I can't trust you. Telling me to _hate_ you, because you lied to me. But." He set his jaw and looked up at Vergil. "But I _know_ you. You're an evil bastard sometimes, but... I don't think even you would've done this, kept my daughter from me, without a really good reason. _Kyrie_ wouldn't have lied to me without a damn good reason. I don't think my demon even can lie to me. It's just been quiet, really quiet, for the past few weeks. Quiet, and unhappy. And it wouldn't have stayed like that without a good reason."

_Offspring_, his demon murmured softly, longingly, in the back of his mind. It fed him an image of Angela, a tiny giggling creature with Kyrie's solemn eyes and his own shy smile. The demon wanted to be with her, protecting her, even now... but it understood that Nero could not. Not until he found a way to be safe around his own child. Because unless he did...

_We wouldn't hurt her_, said his inner human. _None of my people would hurt a child! We just need to study her. Run a few tests. We could share her strength with the human race --_

"I won't let you have her," Nero snarled, twitching abruptly away from Vergil. Vergil kept a grip on him, but it was a narrow thing; Nero had caught him by surprise.

_You trust them_, the human went on, contemptuously now. _Them, but not yourself? Vergil tore your arm off -- the arm he clutches now. Do you think that means anything to him? He's not even as human as Dante. He thinks only of possession, of power; you're 'his.' Is that love, Nero? And Dante cares only for his own pleasure. He certainly enjoys using you, but anything more? He loves only Vergil. You're nothing to him but --_

"Shut. The fuck. Up!" He grabbed his head, but there was nothing he could do. The voice was in him. He couldn't even will it silent anymore. The human kept talking at him, and finally he turned back to Dante and Vergil, who now stood watching him in dawning horror.

"I don't know what to do," Nero said. His voice shook. _He_ shook. "I feel like I'm gonna go crazy if this keeps up. It's not just about Angela anymore, it's everything. I can't _be_ like this -- at war with myself -- and, and stay fucking sane!" He swallowed. If they said no... no. They wouldn't. He made himself say it. "I need help. Please. You gotta help me."

The human snorted in contempt inside him. _Vergil will despise you for such weakness._ He tried to ignore it but found himself searching his father's face anyway, fearing what he would see. Vergil's jaw was tight, his expression unreadable -- but he took both Nero's arms this time, and pulled Nero between them. Dante came close and cupped the back of Nero's head. When he spoke, his voice, too, was heavy with emotion, even as he put on a weak smile. That smile covered fear, Nero could tell. Fear for Nero. 

"Stupid kid," he said, with remarkable gentleness. "You know you don't even have to ask."

#

There was a growl in Vergil's chest. Nero wasn't sure his father even knew that he was growling. It was so low, a feeling more than a sound, that it mostly just seemed like a part of his breathing, at first. But it lingered in between his breaths, steady, like the beat of Vergil's heart. Nero pressed his head against Vergil's sternum and focused on that soft, radiant growl, letting it warm him and drown out the bile of his inner human's now-ceaseless voice, and the lonely ache of his demon self. It wasn't relief, exactly. He could still hear his other selves. He just knew he wasn't alone anymore, in facing them.

Vergil had appropriated Nero, hooking him close and holding him there, while Dante leaned on his desk, speaking low to someone else over the phone. After a long conversation, Dante finally hung up and turned to them. "He's on his way."

"Your witch." Vergil, his fingers meditatively massaging Nero's scalp, said the words with a brittle precision that usually meant he was in a killing mood.

_Is,_ whispered Nero's demon. _Wants to kill what troubles you, yes? Good fathers protect offspring._

_And you haven't been a good father at all, so far_, whispered his human self. 

And though logic immediately contradicted this -- Nero hadn't been a good father because he hadn't known he was a father, because his human self was a threat to the child -- the barb hit closer to home than it should have, because the heart wasn't logical. He'd spent his life without a father, and had always vowed he would be there for any children of his... Pressing his face into Vergil's chest, he sighed and hated himself a little more. 

His demon sighed too, but did not speak again.

"Yeah, my witch," Dante said, leaning back against the desk. "Technically warlock, but he gets all snippy if you use that word -- 'unnecessary gender binary, people think warlocks are weaker than witches and that's horseshit,' blah blah blah, don't get him started unless you want a lecture. He's the one who set up my vault for me. Also, way back in the day, he helped me with, uh, my own version of this problem."

Vergil lifted an eyebrow, and Nero was also surprised enough to pull himself out of the fog of misery he'd sunk into. "You cut yourself in half?" Nero asked.

"Hell, no," Dante said, with a little snort. "None of us would be here if I'd ever done anything that stupid. My demon would eat my human first, and then it would eat the rest of the world. But after Temen-ni-gru, there was a while when my demon and I... We didn't always see eye-to-eye, let's just say."

"You couldn't control it after I forced it awake in you," Vergil said. His hands worked steadily in Nero's hair. Flex, relax. Flex, relax.

Dante eyed him sidelong. "Yeah. Hated you for that, for a long time."

Flex, relax. "I believed it was necessary, at the time. That showing you your weakness would help you understand why I sought power." Flex. "I still believe that."

Dante sighed. "Yeah. And you were right; figured that out at Mallet Island. But it made things hard for me when I couldn't be among humans for long without... bad thoughts. It's not like _you_ were around at that point. So that's why I found my witch. Alone, the bad thoughts... got heavy, after a while. Alone was bad. He helped me make peace with my demon so I could be safe around people again."

Vergil's fingers had not relaxed. "Making you suffer was not my intention."

"I know that." Dante's voice had grown soft. There was a moment's silence between them, and then at last Vergil's hand relaxed. When Nero looked up, he was watching Vergil and smiling with a kind of heavy, sad warmth. Then his gaze flicked down to Nero, still carrying that weight. "Eh, shit just sucks sometimes. Nothing wrong with looking for help when you need it, is what I'm saying."

Nero swallowed, unspeakably grateful.

Then Dante blinked and turned toward the front door of Devil May Cry. Nero felt it too: a sudden throb of immense arcane power, flexing and then ebbing, practically on the building's doorstep. He jerked to his feet, tensing and lifting a hand to call for the Black King; Yamato was already in Vergil's hand. "Hold your timehorses," Dante said, waving them off. "That's just my guy. I told him it was urgent, so he took the express."

The door opened then, and a -- human? -- came in. Nero wasn't sure about that part, first because the man _floated_ into DMC, his feet gliding a few inches above the floorboards. Second because, although he otherwise looked like an ordinary human being -- dressed in a baggy hoodie and sagging jeans, sort of agelessly young, lean and tall, with nut-brown skin and long black hair caught up in a messy manbun, yawning as he glided along -- his back bore a pair of glimmering, silver-white, not-quite-real butterfly wings, which fanned gently behind and above him. 

"Express, my arse," the young man said, through the yawn. Somehow, despite the yawn, his British accent was clear. Then he sighed. "I made a portal. That's bloody Star Trek shit, innit. Faster'n _you_, even when you go all -- " He pantomimed the curving horns of Dante's higher-level demon form. Which made Nero notice the short, stubby things poking out of the man's hair, no more than an inch long or so, and rounded like buttons. Some kind of hair ornaments?

Dante chuckled, putting his hands on his hips. "Eh, that's only 'cause I let you win that one time. Thanks for showing up, Terrell. You know you're floating?"

Terrell stopped moving forward, blinked, and glanced down at his feet. "Fuck." Abruptly he dropped to the floor, swaying a little for a second before straightening.

"Also?" Dante lifted his hands and fluttered them like wings.

"Oh, fucking seriously?" Terrell half-turned, trying to see his own wings, but they just swung with him. After a moment, however, they and the horn-nubs on his head faded away, and Terrell turned back to them, now looking completely human. "See, _this_ is why you don't wake a witch out of a sound sleep. Timezones, Dante, bloody timezones."

"Witch?" Vergil asked. His voice had gone low and smooth in that way it so often did when he was sizing up an enemy. "I think not."

Terrell scowled at him. "Bloody _yeah I am_," he snapped. "I've got all my certifications! Just because I'm currently between covens, you don't gotta get judgy -- "

Dante coughed. "He means the wings and horns, Terr."

"What? Oh, those. Wha' 'bout 'em?"

"You're half devil," Vergil said. He had a hand on Yamato's hilt, and his eyes had narrowed. "Something low-order, though. I would guess a Hell Butterfly -- though I didn't think that was possible."

Terrell narrowed his eyes back at Vergil. "Oh, you know everything, do ya? Know what happens when the third-degree mistress of the most powerful coven in the land gets to feeling itchy in her ladyparts, and she's too special to just hire some young hot thing or buy a good sex toy like any other woman of quality, _and_ she knows how to force a low demon into a pleasing human shape with a nice fat cock? _Me._ I'm what happens. And it sucks. Now who the fuck are you?"

Nero hadn't often seen his father taken aback, and he fought the urge to laugh at it now -- his first laugh in what felt like days. Dante, thankfully, came to Vergil's rescue. "That's my big brother, Terr. The one I told you about?"

"Ah, Mr. Stabby-stab." Terr's disdainful gaze raked up and down Vergil, clearly found him wanting, and then shifted over to Nero. "This'll be the nephew, then. Stabby-stab Junior?"

Nero coughed, trying not to notice Vergil's hand flexing as he clearly contemplated murdering Terrell for the nickname. "Maybe we can go with Mr. Punchy-punch? I mean. If you're gonna."

Terrell snorted a laugh, but there was a note of approval in it. Then, however, his smile faded, and he stepped closer to Nero, tilting his head as his eyes unfocused. "Oh. Now _that's_ not good, isn't it? Poor thing, no wonder you're having trouble."

"What?" Nero darted a look at Vergil and Dante, but both of them looked just as confused as he did.

"Well, just _look_." And before Nero could step back, Terrell dipped a hand into the hoodie's belly pocket, then flicked something into his face that looked like glittering dust. Nero blinked and spluttered, trying to wipe his face off; the stuff tingled. As he did this, Terrell spoke a single word in a language that made Nero's ears itch.

When Nero managed to clear the glittering stuff from his eyes and look around, he jumped. Beside him was the strange, misty form of another person -- bigger than him, generally humanoid, and featureless other than... horns, arcing 'round the figure's head like a Greek laurel wreath. Also double wings, check, each tipped with a claw-hand... he knew who this misty form was meant to be. But only one leg? Nero looked down... to where the misty shape overlapped his own. _Conjoined_ with his own, at the hip; its right leg was Nero's left, the two limbs an overlapping blur.

"Uh, is this how it's supposed to -- " Nero turned to Terrell -- and flinched at the sight of _another_ hazy figure attached to him. Unlike the first, however, this one was less clear mist than clouded, its color thick and ugly, like an old bruise. And this one had _no_ legs. It was little more than an armless torso, jutting from Nero's side like some kind of huge horrible worm. What bothered him was that the thing kept moving. Its head twisted about in frustration, the torso flexed wildly, and belatedly he realized the thing was _trying_ _to get out of him_. Flailing, twisting, doing its damnedest to break free. He couldn't feel it or hear it, but just seeing its frantic movement was horrifying.

"Whoooooa," Dante said, coming over. So they could all see it.

"That is..." Vergil looked from one to the other of the misty figures, frowning.

"That," Terrell said with a sigh, "is Split Soul Syndrome. Worst case I've ever seen. I mean, you clearly had it too, once." He glanced over at Vergil. "I can see the scar. But your soul's healed up nicely, and shouldn't give you any trouble." Vergil lifted an eyebrow. Terrell turned back to Nero. "You, though. When you re-fused the two parts of yourself, the souls rejoined, but only barely, reluctantly. The differences between your parts have been exacerbated by separation. This happens a lot when people split themselves; don't know why anyone bothers. The risks always outweigh the benefits. And with part demons, rejoining the split pieces is always a bit of a trial."

"So we have found," Vergil said, drily.

Dante grimaced. "Yeah. Come on, get back to how we _fix_ this, Terr. You always did run your mouth too much."

"'You always did run your mouth too much.'" Terrell repeated this in a high-pitched mocking whine. "Don't think I got any complaints about my mouth from you _last_ time."

Vergil went dangerously still. Nero stared from Terrell to Dante, and groaned. "Oh, are you _kidding_? God, Dante, can't you ever keep your dick in your pants?"

"Sex is a healthy and natural part of human and demon life," Dante said, with exaggerated primness. "And pants are overrated. _Terr_. Go on."

Terrell rolled his eyes, but resumed. "Anyhow. Let me see if I can break this down." He looked around, then spotted glasses over at DMC's bar. Heading over, he moved behind the bar and ran some water in one of them. "Here. This was you before you split." He set out a single full glass of water. Then he put two empty glasses beside it. "When part-demons split, the demon part of us isn't supposed to get any of the soul. It's a demon, innit? Souls are strictly optional for that sort, and most of 'em don't want one. So yours _should_ have all gone into your human." He poured all of the water into one of the two glasses, then put away the original glass. "Your demon and your human, no soul and all of your soul, respectively. But here's where things went pear-shaped. Instead, something like this happened." He poured half of the water into one glass, and left half in the other. "Your soul didn't just move into a human vessel, it split itself between the two. Your demon and your human each got a chunk."

Nero had followed Terrell to the bar; Vergil and Dante flanked him. "Why?" Vergil asked.

"Fuck if I know. Souls aren't predictable things. But here's where shit goes bad. First, your human soul started to fester." Terrell extended a graceful hand over one of the glasses, and with a flourish produced a tiny plastic bottle. From this he squeezed three drops of a dark liquid, which tinted the water in the glass an ugly purple -- not unlike the color of the flailing, stunted soul jutting from Nero's side.

"What is that?" Nero asked, jerking his chin at the plastic bottle. "Some kind of witch alchemy?"

"Blue dye number two," Terrell said. "Was tie-dyeing t-shirts with the niece the other day, forgot to put the dyes away."

Beside Nero, Vergil let out a long, frustrated sigh. Nero resisted the urge to start yelling. "Okay. So why is my human soul going bad?"

"Because sometimes human souls do that." Terrell shrugged. "Demons act on their nature, yeah? Humans are the only ones who can _choose_ to be evil, hateful fucks. Yours, sadly, is extra fucky that way. But that's only part of your problem." Under the bar, Nero heard Terrell running more water in the sink. He then added more water to the remaining glass of clear water, until it was nearly full. "Your demon? Its soul has _grown_ since you split it. Thing's got nearly a whole soul all its own by now. What you been feeding it?"

Nero frowned. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Art? Love? Something along those lines?"

"I..." Abruptly Nero blushed, thinking of poetry he'd memorized for Vergil. Fashions he'd worn for both of them, like the silver cuffs. Times he'd lain awake between his father and uncle and just let himself reverberate with how much he loved them, how lucky he was, how happy he was. 

And also... _Angela._ Yes. His demon had grown because it loved his daughter.

"Y-yeah," Nero said, slowly. "I guess I did. Yeah."

Terrell folded his arms, glancing at Vergil and then Dante, and sighing. "Love's never a bad thing," he said, more softly. "And the human body can handle having a little too much soul. The problem is the imbalance, which just exacerbates any problems you've already got. Souls are hard on demons, see? They're not really built for passion, or grief, or even the kind of joy you get from having a soul. Overwhelms them, and they go a little crazy with it. Why, last time I heard of a high-order demon growing this much of a soul, the silly fucker overthrew a demon king, destroyed his own power by using it to seal the two worlds from each other, and eventually even _got married_." He waggled his eyebrows at Vergil.

Vergil took a deep breath, probably for patience. "Is there a point."

"Sure." He turned to Nero and tapped the half-glass of purpled water. "You've got a pathological imbalance and fatal incompatibility between your two souls. Short version: soul cancer. Your human soul is the core of the malignancy. The healthy parts of your soul -- that's like ninety percent your demon at this point -- are trying to fight it, but that alone will drive you insane if it keeps up. Probably with lots of collateral damage, given your family history. And end of day, your healthy self is going to lose. The malignancy will encroach more and more on the rest of you, until it takes over. You'll still be alive, but you -- your _personality_, the Nero everyone knows and loves -- will effectively be dead. You'll just be this." He poured the purple glass into the clear glass. It immediately tainted all of the water purple, and overflowed onto the bar-top. "There'll be nothing in you but hate and rage, spewing everywhere, and you'll have to be put down before you hurt someone, or many someones. Soul cancer's always terminal. Sorry, lad."

Nero flinched, feeling as if he'd been run over by a truck. Dante caught his breath. "That's unacceptable," Vergil snarled.

"Yeah, it sucks. But that's my diagnosis. You want a second opinion, I can refer you to a few covens. But with a malignancy this bad, there's really only one possible outcome."

Feeling hollow, Nero looked down at the flailing thing at his side. It had begun to fade from visibility as whatever magic Terrell had worked wore off. Which was good, because looking at it was like being able to see a tumor and know that it hated you.

"There..." He swallowed. "There has to be a way to... I don't know. Cut out the bad part? Father, if, if you cut it off with the Yamato -- " Vergil immediately put a hand on his sword's hilt.

Terrell flinched and grabbed Vergil's hand. Vergil's nostrils flared in absolute fury, but Terrell quickly said, "Do that and you'll kill him. Dead as a doornail, by your hand."

Vergil bared his teeth. "Explain. And _get your hands off me_."

Terrell drew back, but there was a dangerous flicker in his gaze, just for a moment. Vergil's eyes blazed blue and the growl that Nero had heard before, the one from deep inside him, abruptly reverberated through the whole room, loud enough to rattle the windows. Nero tensed, hoping he wasn't about to see what a fight between two _other_ powerful half-demons -- one a witch -- looked like. But finally Terrell sighed, deliberately turned his gaze slightly aside, and said to Dante through his teeth, "Didn't tell me your brother was a demon lord, Big D."

Dante threw him a glare. "Maybe I figured you could be professional. Especially given that you've just told him _his son is dying_."

Terrell twitched a bit, then sighed. "Shit. Right. Sorry." He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced briefly at Vergil. "Look, it's the halfsie thing, yeah? Part of me wants to bow and ask you to -- " He grimaced. " -- claim me. Other part wants to capture you in a pentagram and make you do _my_ bidding."

"Both halves of you had better be smarter than that," Vergil said, icily. "Now. Explain."

"And tell us how to fix him," Dante added.

"_Fix_ him?" Terrell turned to stare at Dante, then at all of them. With an exasperated sigh, he focused on Vergil and said, "Look. Trying to take the malignant soul out of him with a sword is the equivalent of using amputation to cure a heart attack; it'll only make things worse. You need precision tools. Arcane surgery. But here's the real problem. What you're talking about doing is _carving out his human soul_. He's meant to be _mostly_ human, but there might be nothing more than a nub of humanity left in him after I take out that diseased part. The rest will be the demon. He'll be a mostly-human body with a mostly-demon soul! What do you think that's going to do to his personality? To his power? Even to his appearance?"

Nero inhaled, understanding at last. It was a kind of spiritual death that he faced. Either he would be taken over by his human and become a monster, or he would turn himself more or less into his demon, and become... what? He didn't know. But he wouldn't be the same.

He turned away from the bar, needing to pace, too restless and horrified to stand still any more. When he did this, the spell Terrell had worked to make his souls visible immediately vanished. At once the voice of his human started up again; Nero hadn't realized the spell was keeping the son of a bitch quiet. _You can't trust anything that creature says_, murmured the voice. _Dante and Vergil only want the demon part of you. They **want** you to cut out your humanity, the best part of yourself. Then you'll be like them, barely more than an animal --_

"Shut. The fuck. Up," Nero snarled, clutching at his head. It didn't stop the voice, however. The human just kept yammering at him. With a groan, he turned -- and found the others staring. Shit. "Sorry. Human's bitching again. He never fucking shuts up, these days."

"Then it's getting worse," Vergil said, softly. His expression hadn't changed -- no. Vergil would always be hard to read, but there were subtle tells that Nero had learned over the years. Tension in the muscles of his jaw, and brow. The steadiness of his gaze. He was worried. Nero felt oddly flattered that Vergil let this much show. "Your despair, when I told you that we meant to mate with that woman. Your duplicitousness in not telling us that you knew about the child. These things aren't like you."

"Yeah, well. Haven't been quite myself lately." Nero sighed, then turned to Terrell. "So can you do this, uh, soul-surgery, right now? Before it gets any worse?"

Terrell smiled without humor. "Yeah. That's best."

Dante scowled. "Hold on, Terr. If Nero does this -- "

"Then I live," Nero snapped. Dante frowned at him. "That's what he's saying, Dante. I'll be different, but I'll still be, I don't know, _more me_ than if I let that other fucker take over. And right now, I can't be with my own child because of this! That's why you hid her from me, isn't it? Fuck, even Kyrie can't trust me anymore." Pain knotted his throat, and he stopped to swallow against it. He hated this whole situation, but if there was a way out of it -- "So... so if I have to _change_ to be safe, if this version of me has to basically die and be remade, then fine. Whatever it takes." 

That was fear in Dante's still expression. Vergil had gone unreadable again, but he'd been on edge this whole time, hadn't he? He'd understood the implications of this from the beginning. The really horrible thing was that Nero couldn't do anything to assuage their fears. He couldn't even reassure himself. He shook his head, aching with frustration, and unwilling to speak his fears aloud in front of Terrell, a stranger. But he was keenly, agonizingly conscious of the fact that he would be a different person after this spiritual surgery... and that the person he could become might not be someone that Dante and Vergil could still love.

_Will not be so different_, suggested his demon, very softly. _Will still love them, yes? We have always loved them together. Will love Angela, still care for Kyrie. Will still love fighting and fucking and wanting to make world right... Yes?_

That was true. But it would be a demon's desires. He'd spent his whole life thinking of himself as human, feeling like a human...

_You'll be a monster_, hissed his human. _A beast behind a human face. Worse than Dante, because at least he didn't **choose** to be like that. If you kill me --_

"Then I can finally live my fucking _life_," Nero snarled back at it. Then he looked up at Dante and Vergil. "I'm _not_ human. I used to hate that about myself; maybe that's why the human part of me is so fucked up. But you've both shown me, again and again, that... that being what we are doesn't have to be a bad thing. That demons can be good." He ducked his eyes, faltering at last. He couldn't look at them anymore. They were so beautiful. He didn't want to lose them. "So maybe I'll be _more_ of a monster, but I already am one now. And maybe it... I don't know. Maybe it won't be so bad? Changing. People change, right?"

But not all relationships survived those changes.

Dante said, softly, "Terr. Can you give us a minute?"

"Sorry, mate, but... no. It's best if I stay," Terrell said. He'd shut his eyes and extended his hands. Tiny, delicate glowing lines, like hairs, had emerged from his fingertips; he'd extended these toward Nero. "Crucial preparations, if I'm to do this right away. If it helps, I'm not paying attention to anything you're _saying_."

Vergil glanced at Terrell, clearly also irritated by his presence, but then he sighed and came to Nero anyhow. "You will always be my son," he said. It was softer than he usually spoke. "That cannot change."

Nero grimaced. He didn't want to be _just_ family to Vergil, and Vergil knew that. If he lost them... He ducked his gaze, hating himself for being afraid, knowing the fear was real. To play this off, he said, "Well, what if I end up weaker?"

"Then I'll simply beat you until you're strong again. What a foolish question." 

In spite of himself, Nero coughed out a laugh. Leave it to Vergil.

Dante came over as well, and ruffled Nero's hair. Nero grumbled out of habit, but did not move away, and when Dante's hand settled at the back of his neck, he leaned on it for a moment, and hoped that Dante could not feel him shaking. He was surprised, however, to feel a tremor in Dante's hand as well. When he looked up, Dante leaned in and kissed his temple. "You'll always be a punk, kid. Not sure anything's going to change that. Don't know what you're so afraid of."

Nero chuckled in spite of himself. Always projecting. And saying what Vergil would not. They loved him; they would always love him. That would not change, even if... well. It would not change.

"Okay," Nero said, taking a deep breath and steeling himself. "Then let's -- "

There was a moment of blankness.

When Nero was aware of himself again, he was on the floor, with Vergil's knee on his back and one arm twisted up between his shoulders. Vergil's talons pierced that arm, gripping him tightly. "Ow, fuck! What the hell?"

"You're back, then?" Dante crouched in front of him -- wearing his Balrog gauntlets, the flames muted for now. And for once, Dante wasn't smiling, his gaze intent and suspicious. "Need to go to the bathroom again?"

"Go to the -- What?"

"You said, 'Let's do it,'" Terrell said, coming into view. His hands glowed again, this time with little circles of white-gold light; he'd resumed his half-demon appearance, with great spectral butterfly wings vaning slowly behind him. "But then you said you had to take a leak. Your mates here caught you trying to go out the window. You fought back pretty hard."

"_That_ wasn't hard," Vergil said, with tight contempt. "We're lucky his human self doesn't know how to use his demonic power to its fullest. You had best proceed now, witch, while he's under control."

Terrell sighed and crouched in front of Nero. "I'm sorry, lad," he said again. "It was always going to come down to this, though, with that human soul of yours being so bad; either you'd go bad too, or you'd have to change somehow, to eliminate the threat. If it helps, think of this as therapy. Just, you know, with magic."

God. His human had actually _taken over_ for a moment. He'd known it was possible, but... He couldn't let this get any worse. "Do it," Nero said to Terrell.

_Never!_ Nero flinched at the psychic lash of his human self's fury and desperation, as Terrell bent closer with those glowing hands. In the same moment, however, he felt a sudden infusion of calm and certainty.

_Do not worry, Nero,_ his demon said into his mind, with genuine affection. _Was born to stop them fighting, yes? To give you family. Changing, now, to **keep** family. Will not be so different. _There was a sound like great wings, big as sails, fluttering around him and folding close. He felt warm and safer than he ever had in his life, even as Terrell's glowing hands touched him and he knew that, in a way, this was the end.

_We keep **you** safe,_ his demon promised. _Sleep, now_.

Then he knew no more.

#

Familiar softness underneath him. Familiar smells: Dante, Vergil, himself. Their bed in his room. Lingering pheromones of desire and repletion, and the salt tang of blood, from the last few times they'd made love. A whiff of fear and sickness, coming unpleasantly from himself.

Familiar voices nearby, talking low.

Nero frowned and sat up. He felt the same. Or did he? He lifted his hands, looked down at himself. Would he know if he was different?

There was a full-length mirror on one side of the room, which Dante teased Vergil about mercilessly, because Vergil looked at himself in it more than all of them. But when Nero looked at himself now, he was relieved to see that he had the same face, the same body. Something _was_ different: he lifted a hand and smoothed it over the shaven sides and back of his head. Also, he had on his silver cuffs -- not just the armband he usually wore, but the throat-torque and the ear- and finger-cuffs that he hadn't put on since that whole business at the Nameless Tower. He still had his coat, sleeveless leather in dark blue with red accents, but it had changed too. Cut differently. Now it laced closed across his midriff and left his upper chest and navel bared. He still wore his favorite pants, which were tough and great for fighting, but his boots were gone. When he looked down at his bare feet, he saw that he had on ankle- and toe-cuffs, too. And... were his toes longer? He flexed them. Okay, that was weird. Was his neck longer? Wait, shit, was he _taller_? Without a ruler he couldn't be sure, but he thought he might be as tall as Vergil, now.

Okay. So, so far, the result of his soul-surgery was a late growth spurt and his clothes turning into almost the outfit that Dante and Vergil had put him in to impress the demon world. He _had_ liked that outfit, just not the circumstances; it had been sort of embarrassing to let his lovers play dress-up...

He blinked, frowning to himself. But why had he found it embarrassing? Weird. If they thought he was beautiful, what was wrong with that? If the way he was dressed now pleased them, and he liked it, too, why wouldn't he keep wearing it?

He was fixating on the wrong things. Setting his jaw, Nero triggered his inner devil, and watched the shape fold around him out of nothingness. Not so different here, either, but definitely taller, yes. Finger- and toe-talons _much_ longer, as black and glossy as Vergil's, but that meant nothing. Did he feel weaker or stronger? No way to tell without sparring. Taking a deep breath, Nero then crouched -- so he wouldn't crack the ceiling again -- and triggered his higher form.

Here, he was shocked to see, was real change at last. His higher form was much smaller, all of a sudden; no bigger than that of Dante's or Vergil's higher forms. Still the same basic shape: four black wings, a tail, heavier armor than his lower shape; still inclined to crouch or perch on all fours. Just no longer likely to run up Dante's bills for renovations, now.

He stood and turned to see then that Dante and Vergil had come into the room; they must have been right outside. They stared at him. "Hey," he said, awkwardly, in the doubled voice of his demonshape.

Dante recovered from shock first, whistling appreciatively. "About time you stopped trying to out-size us! But you're going to have to train all over again to learn how to fight in that size."

Nero let the shape slip off him and the power dissipate, and watched their gazes sharpen as they took in his new default appearance. "Uh. I guess? I don't feel very different, except for that. I mean. I can't tell if I'm any weaker or stronger. I feel... like myself."

"The witch said that he tried to preserve 'the proper balance' of you," Vergil said slowly. He had begun to circle Nero, examining him with palpable wariness. "There's still some human left in your soul. The malignancy has been excised. But..."

Nero blinked at the realization that Vergil had Yamato in hand. He had not put his right hand on the hilt, but he was clearly ready for anything. "Shit," Nero said in alarm. "Did something else happen? What?"

"Truth is, we don't know," Dante said. And now Nero saw that he'd moved to the other side of the room. Both of them were flanking him. "Terrell was doing his thing, which basically involved him doing what looked like acupuncture except with needles made of light and some weird stinky incense, but then all of a sudden you woke up in the middle of the operation, growled at him, and said -- " He cleared his throat, then said in a credible imitation of Nero's demon, "'Is too much human. Will grow back bad! We guard the best of him. Cut out rest.'" Nero stared at him, and Dante smiled uneasily. "And then you went back to sleep, but that basically freaked Terrell out so much that he did what your demon told him to do."

"Oh, fucking _hell_," Nero groaned.

"So now we don't know what you are," Vergil finished. His stance was ready, still. "Terrell believes the creature can be trusted, and would know the proper balance of your soul better than him, but the fact remains that what little of you remains as human was selected _by your demon._ Everything depends on whether it chose wisely."

Nero stared at him, then at Dante. At the way they'd bracketed him. This was everything he'd feared. _They did not trust him._ And without trust, what room could there be for love?

He sagged, miserable. If he went to sleep in the van for tonight, that would give him time to think. Maybe he could crash with Nico until he found someplace else to --

Something stirred inside him, with a little hiss of disapproval. _Is human talk. Be demon now. Fight._

He blinked. The voice of his demon -- softer and more distant than before, but still there. He found himself relieved that it still existed. But... what?

_Fight! Love them? Fight._ Then there followed a long, hissing sigh. _Tired. You pain in ass lately. Let sleep now._ Silence.

Shit. Nero inhaled in sudden understanding. It _wasn't_ the demon way to give in so easily, was it? Not even in matters of love. Sparda, after all, had changed the two worlds for the humans he loved. The least Nero could do was fight for what was his.

"And I didn't," he said, blinking up at Vergil. "I should have, and because I listened to my stupid-ass, miserable, self-absorbed human, I _didn't_."

Vergil frowned. "What?"

"Lady. _You_ weren't trying to get her pregnant; you just wanted to fuck her. I shouldn't have let you." Nero laughed in sudden, refreshing relief. God, his head felt clear for the first time in ages. He'd been such a fool. "I should've kicked your ass!"

Nero had seen Vergil taken aback exactly three times, two of them in the past day. "As I said," Vergil began, drawing himself up, "I'm a demon. What I do with my body -- "

"Is _entirely_ up to me," Nero said, going over to him. Vergil did not back up, but his stillness abruptly felt defensive rather than dangerous. "You're _mine_. That's what that fucking means. We've claimed each other, and no, you _don't_ get to do whatever you want with your body anymore."

Vergil stared back at him as Nero rounded on Dante. "You, either."

Dante, who'd been trying to hold back a laugh, blinked and held up his hands. "Whoa, wait, you were the one who said you wanted a little one around. That doesn't happen without _somebody's_ uterus being involved, kid, sorry. Not without a lot of weird gross demon-world shit, anyway."

Nero materialized a wing and flicked it across the room, grabbing Dante by the throat with a wing-claw and snatching him near. Dante twitched in surprise, but didn't fight him; good. "And did you _ask_ me, before you put a bow on your dick and loaned it out to Lady? Did you forget whose dick that was?"

"Uhhh -- " Abruptly Dante looked guilty. "Shit. But I mean... hey, Verg said he'd cleared it with you!"

Vergil glared at him. "You've always been a tattle-tale, Dante."

Nero tilted his head at both of them and let a growl rise in his chest. Just a warning. He wasn't really angry, not after all this, but lines had been crossed, and he needed to reestablish them. Demons did not tolerate such breaches. "Terrell's pretty. Kind of schlubby chic; not my usual taste, but not bad." He let himself consider it for a moment. Letting that long hair down from its messy bun. Would Terrell like it if Nero grabbed those delicate-seeming wings...? "Maybe I ought to go thank him for literally saving my soul. What do you two think?"

The moment's contemplation had been enough to change his scent, lacing it with his momentary interest, and both of them reacted at once. Vergil's lips pressed tight together with fury, although he did not speak; he got Nero's point. Dante winced. "That's low, k -- _Mine_." Suddenly his demon snarled from his throat, sharpening Dante's teeth. Dante was still there; he blinked in surprise at the suddenness of his demon's rise.

Nero bared his teeth and snarled right back into Dante's face, quick as a flash. "Then you'd better act like you want me, from here on. Do anything like this again without asking and I'll fucking kill you. Got it?"

Dante's eyes widened. But the demon's snarl modulated at once, softening into a deep, pleased, motorcycle-rough rumble. It snapped at Nero abruptly, teeth blurring. Just a love-snap. Nero merely leaned to the side so that it missed, and darted in himself for a quick, bloodless nip at Dante's jaw before pulling back. The demon did, too, but not before Nero saw it grin.

Then Dante was completely himself again, and grimacing. "Oh-kay," he said. "Yeah, got it."

Nero eyed Vergil. "So that's the new rule. You got a problem with it?"

"I acknowledge that you may _attempt_ to kill me, should I take a lover other than Dante at any point," Vergil said, with careful dignity. "I will not apologize for indulging my lust, however. I _am_ a demon... and you didn't stop me."

Nero inclined his head. "Yeah, I guess I'll own that. We should've talked about all of this a long time ago. Then it wouldn't have mattered that the human had me thinking such awful things. Like, you didn't want me anymore. Like I must have done something wrong." He could remember thinking and feeling those things, and that those feelings had been real at the time, but now they were like looking at the past through a curtain, hazy and somehow separate from the him that he was now.

"Demons are not so fickle as humans," Vergil said, with an air of contempt. Then he sighed. "But I _should_ have questioned your discomfort at the time. If nothing else, we might have realized your human was causing difficulties sooner. And I should have made it clear that it isn't possible for me to simply stop wanting you. That you somehow did not know this... is a failure on my part, for which... I apologize."

Dante turned to stare at him, eyes wide. Vergil pointedly ignored him. Nero let out a breath of surprise himself, then smiled. "Yeah, okay then." He let go of Dante with his claw-hand and vanished the wing. "So you can both make it up to me by helping convince Kyrie to let me have shared custody. I know she wants Angela to have a normal life," he said quickly, when Dante inhaled to speak. "But it's already too late for that. And anyway, Angela's _my_ child, too. Our family, and she's going to need us. That isn't up to Kyrie alone."

Dante chuckled, shaking his head. "Of course. We can call her first thing in the morning, then head out to talk in person. But kid, I gotta say, I'm liking the newer, more decisive you." He glanced at Vergil.

Vergil considered Nero a moment longer, then finally vanished Yamato. "It does seem clear that the demon somehow preserved the relevant parts of his personality while discarding the self-loathing, the hesitancy, and -- "

"Yeah, yeah." Nero stepped forward and hooked his fingers over Vergil's belt, then ducked his head to nuzzle under his father's chin. "Make-up sex, now. Come on."

" -- the sexual repression," Vergil finished, amused. "Among other things. And yes," and he blurred to catch Nero's chin, force it up, and deliver a sharp bite to his throat, which pretty much shifted Nero's mood entirely from mild pique to Fuck Me Now, "I see no reason why we can't do that. Brother?"

Dante had already tossed off his jacket. "Hell, I've been thinking it since that little death threat. Get him on the bed, I'll go lock the door downstairs." 

He turned to go -- then paused, looking at Nero for a long moment, something soft and powerful in his gaze. Nero knew what he was thinking, because it was the same thought in his own mind, accompanied by relief. _It's still good. We're still each other's. We can still make it work._ He was a different person, but that was always going to be the case, wasn't it? So much had changed in their lives. And their relationship had gone through some changes, but they'd weathered them and gotten stronger. Wasn't that how good relationships were supposed to go?

Vergil shifted to pull him close, and Nero let him -- but Nero also reached for Dante, and after a moment, Dante came to him, taking his hand. "Ah, hell," Dante said, immediately nuzzling into Nero's hair as he let his head fall back. "Anybody walks in, they'll just have to get an earful." He moved behind Nero, nibbled at his neck from the other side, and started undressing him.

Nero shut his eyes and relaxed into the circle of their hands and teeth, laughing to himself. "God, I fucking love you two," he said -- and for the first time in a long while he felt that love without fear, without reservation or qualification. "So fucking much." Was that a demon thing or a human thing? Didn't matter. It was a Nero thing, and that was more than enough for him.

Then they pulled him down to the floor, and he had his fill of them, and all was well again at last.

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is possibly an unorthodox solution for the multiple problems we had going into this story: D&V keeping Nero's child secret from him, Nero's human soul being a threat, even the damage done to the relationship by Vergil's selfishness and Nero's poor self-esteem. (Yeah, a lot of you were mad about that! Me, too.) But those are a lot of loose ends to tie up! I hope this worked well for all of you.
> 
> Sincerely hope you liked Terrell, who was fun to write. In my head he looks like a young hipster Hugo from Dream Daddy, lol. Also, Nero isn't really very different. In my head, what's basically happened here is that he's now a mostly-human body filled with a mostly-demonic soul... or in math-equivalent terms, he's half human and half demon. All it really means is that he's matured some more, and shed some of the crippling emotional baggage that came from his shitty upbringing in Fortuna. Not all of it; to my mind, both Dante and Nero are predisposed to chronic depression, and mental health issues don't just go away magically. But at least the more toxic habits Nero was starting to develop -- lying to his partners and the urge to self-destruct his relationship, frex -- have been dealt with. And now he's more inclined to solve his problems the demon way, by directly confronting and trying to destroy them... which, given who he's involved with, is probably a more effective way to handle things anyway.
> 
> I'm going to -- again -- declare an end to the Family Affair saga here. Or rather, ha ha, I'm going to declare an end to the "main" storyline, because a bunch of you have already sent me some juicylarious prompts, and I want to write them! Also, I want to eventually see the whole gang hanging out, babies and all. I definitely want to write more random porn. But I'm going to consider those other stories just cute side-stories; hopefully none of them will get as plot-heavy as the last few entries have been. As enjoyable as it is to smack you with cliffhangers, doing so takes a lot of time, and I'm tired. Even my muse is tired, which I never thought I'd say. 
> 
> (Don't worry. She'll be fine.)


End file.
